Ansip Signs On as Juncker Reboots European Commission

For months now, every long lunch your correspondent has had has concluded with “so… who are you hearing for commissioner?” or words to that effect. Now we know, and many of the rumors were correct: there is a big souped-up digital role, an Estonian got it, and the digital domain got extended to include areas such as copyright and data protection.

Let’s start with the big boss, Estonia’s Andrus Ansip, who becomes a European Commission vice president in charge of the digital single market. Mr. Ansip’s country is a byword for all-thing tech-tastic: citizens vote online, it’s the birthplace of Skype, and President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is a digital enthusiast (he’s even written in Assembler on a PDP-8 microcomputer).

Mr. Ansip isn’t quite as online as Mr. Ilves – he doesn’t have an official Twitter account yet, while Mr. Ilves has 34,000 followers – but he gets to look after a whole host of host areas in the newly restructured commission, where vice presidents oversee several commissioners. Everyone’s important, though! As Mr. Juncker said when announcing the roles, “Don’t view the VPs as first-class commissioners and other commissioners as second-class citizens–that’s not the case at all.”

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